Billy Graham: The Gospel as Niceness
I was unhappy to discover that Billy Graham is unwilling to say that homosexuality is sinful or that Mormons, Jews, and Muslims are sinning by not accepting Christ. All he has is a gospel of niceness. Here, from Sharper Iron:
King: Do you think (homosexuality) is a choice?
Graham: Well, that’s a big debate.
King: But if it’s not a choice, it can’t be a sin. Right?
Graham: Well, maybe. God will make that judgment, not me. I’m not deciding who’s a sinner and who is not.
…
KING: But what about those faiths — the Mormons and the others that you mentioned — believe in Christ. They believe they will meet Christ. What about those like the Jews, the Muslims, who don’t believe they …
GRAHAM: That’s in God’s hands. I can’t be the judge.
KING: You don’t judge them?
GRAHAM: No.
…
KING: How do you feel when you see a lot of these strong Christian leaders go on television and say, you are condemned, you will live in hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ , and they are forceful and judgmental?
GRAHAM: Well, they have a right to say that, and they are true to a certain extent, but I don’t — that’s not my calling. My calling is to preach the love of God and the forgiveness of God and the fact that he does forgive us. That’s what the cross is all about, what the resurrection is all about, that’s the gospel. And you can get off on all kinds of different side trends, and in my earlier ministry, I did the same, but as I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving. And the Jerry Falwells and people like that, I love them, I thank God for their ministry, he has a great university and two or three of my grandchildren have gone there, they have had a tremendous change in their lives for being there, and some of the other people are the same way, but at the other end of the extreme.
July 29th, 2005 at 11:25 am
It’s really difficult to say what a person is thinking from words alone, but I can imagine that he’s following Jesus’s saying of “Do not judge, lest ye be judged” and Jesus’s example of not condeming the woman caught in adultery. Yes, Jesus said to “sin no more,” but he could read people’s hearts. I imagine Graham has his opinions, but perhaps he is simply aware of how much he can’t read others’ hearts and how fallible he is (no interpretation is cloaked in infallibility), and wishes to focus on the gospel of love, and let God’s spirit do the rest. I realize that can lead down quite a slippery slope, but whether Graham is wrong or not to take that path, I can’t say.